Christ Is Relevant to Meaninglessness

Warren Wiersbe gives us a perspective on life and living in his discussion on Ecclesiastes taken from the Be Transformed Study Bible.

It’s as if Solomon were telling us, “Life is filled with difficulties and perplexities, and there’s much that nobody can understand, let alone control. From the human point of view, it’s all meaningless and folly. But life is God’s gift to us, and he wants us to enjoy it and use it for his glory. So, instead of complaining about what you don’t have, start giving thinks for what you do have—and be satisfied!”

Ecclesiastes contains a message for the faithful believer who wants to serve the Lord and have a fulfilled life in Jesus Christ. Solomon wrote, in effect, “Don’t bury your head in the sand and pretend that problems don’t exist. They do! Face life honestly, but look at life from God’s perspective. Human philosophies will fail you. Use your God-given wisdom, but don’t expect to solve every problem or answer every question. What is important is to obey God’s will and enjoy all that he gives you. Remember, death is coming—so be prepared!”

Life without Jesus Christ is indeed “meaningless—like chasing the wind” (Eccl 1:14). But when you know Christ personally, and live for him faithfully, you experience "the joy of [God’s] presence and the pleasures of living with [him] forever" (Ps 16:11).

Ecclesiastes and its writer, Solomon, can best be understood by remembering the final written lines: “That’s the whole story. Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty. God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad” (Eccl. 12:13-14). This is one story to read with the ending in mind.

The last phrase in 12:13, “for this is everyone’s duty,” can be translated “this is the end of a person” (that is, a person’s purpose in life), or “this is for all people.” When Solomon looked at life “under the sun,” everything was fragmented and he could see no pattern. But when he looked at life from God’s point of view “under heaven,” everything came together into one whole. If a person wants to have wholeness, he or she must begin with God.

Life is tough, but it is the gift of God. Life doesn’t get easier if you try to run away from it. All the works that are done “under the sun” never truly satisfy the heart. They are “meaningless.” Both the workaholic and the alcoholic are running away from reality and living on substitutes, and one day the bubble of illusion will burst. We only make life harder when we try to escape. Instead of running away from life, we should run to God and let him make life worth living.

“While still seeking wisdom, I clutched at foolishness. In this way, I tried to experience the only happiness most people find during their brief life in the world” (Eccl. 2:3). “Anything I wanted, I would take. I denied myself no pleasure…. But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing really worthwhile anywhere” (Eccl. 2:10-11). If we rejoice in the gifts, but forget the Giver then we are ungrateful idolaters. If we cooperate with God’s timing, life will not be meaningless. Everything will be “beautiful for its own time” (Eccl. 3:11), even the most difficult experiences of life. God is sovereign and has a time and a purpose for everything (Rom. 8:28).

“He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end” (Eccl. 3:11). “God’s purpose is that people should fear him” (Eccl. 3:14). Life is not in vain if it is lived according to the will of God. So when we live for him and let him have his way, life is meaningful and manageable. Instead of complaining about what we don’t have, let’s enjoy what we do have and thank God for it.

Jesus Christ says, “My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life” (John 10:10). Paul declares, “So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless” (1 Cor. 15:58).

Is life worth living? Yes, if you are truly alive through faith in Jesus Christ. Then you can be satisfied, no matter what God may permit to come to your life. “Whoever has the Son has life, whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life” (1 John 5:12). You can receive life in Christ and–be satisfied!

Christ Is Relevant to Relationships

relevant: having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand; affording evidence tending to prove or disprove the matter at issue or under discussion. (Webster's dictionary)

When we live independently from God we search for a substitute as our validating source. Without a desperate dependency on Him we establish a counterfeit connection with people, positions, and possessions in our pursuit for validation. We extract love from illicit relationships to prove that we are lovable, to establish our significance, and to enable us to feel secure. But in actuality we suffer loss because people, positions, and possessions are incapable of fulfilling us. Ultimately we are left unfulfilled, dissatisfied, and incomplete as the result of pursuing God substitutes. The delusional sense of satisfaction that stimulates and sedates eventually fades and we are left wanting more. In our vain attempts we explore other counterfeits that may promise temporary contentment but only provide mutually satisfying exploitation and manipulation to empower our identity.

This is how Joel tells his story.
“I have been a Christian since the age of five. I had been very active in church my whole life. But there were two things I wanted out of life. Since kindergarten I wanted to be married and I wanted to be a soldier. I was actually listed in the city newspaper on Valentine’s Day for having the most girlfriends in my school, in kindergarten, because that’s what I’ve always wanted—a relationship with a special woman. I believed there was a person out there who would complete me and that I could complete her.

“I was introduced to a beautiful, wonderful woman and within a year asked her to marry me. I found the full realm of everything that interdependence had to offer. She was drop-dead gorgeous and made me feel loveable, significant, and secure. I attained my goal.

“I also believed my job could give me identity. So I signed up to be a soldier at the age of seventeen (actually, my parents had to sign me in through the Delayed Entry Program). I can’t even describe how I felt when I graduated basic training. I had made it. This was my purpose in life. The military. Strong. Proud. Full of honor. I had a place to belong. Kids looked up to me. People thanked me. I was honored. I had love, significance, and security. I had it all.

“Because my title of soldier was in my God place, I sacrificed myself for my god. Physically I was pushed by my unit and pushed myself to the point that I sustained many permanent injuries, and for a short time I couldn’t even walk. After cycling through recovery and re-injury, I continued to drive myself even with my limitations. Following many visits to doctor’s offices, emergency rooms, and twelve surgeries, the military said I was no longer fit for service. At twenty-six years of age I was medically retired from the only career I ever wanted. I was filled with anger, frustration, and pain.

“But no matter how bad life got, I was convinced I would be okay because I still had what really completed me, my wife. People were awestruck by our marriage. Friends admired us and were jealous of our relationship. I’d like to say I forgot about God because I figured that since I was a Christian He would just bless off on what I wanted. The truth is, He just wasn’t my priority.

“Then one of us was no longer interested in “till death do us part.” To say I was crushed would be like saying the ocean is a drop of water on a small pile of dirt. Emptiness resulted.

“But that didn’t mean God took His rightful place. That wasn’t what I really wanted. What does it matter if God loves me? My wife doesn’t love me. I can’t serve in my beloved military anymore. I was empty. There was no human love that mattered, no value, no worth, no purpose, no security, no fulfillment. Nothing mattered, nothing was safe, and nothing was secure. There was nothing to keep me going, no reason for living.

“Although God had been God all my life, there was little to no evidence of that in my life. I had dedicated my existence to the idolatry of God substitutes, depending on something that’s not God. Because God is who He is, He can bring good out of evil. But that doesn’t mean He will give back our God substitutes. In His proper place God can foster love, value, worth, security, and significance.

“God will meet us in our pain if we allow Him to. To be honest, I’m not so sure God doesn’t welcome pain in our lives. Not because He’s sadistic or cruel, but because He knows He’s big enough to handle it, and He is enough to bring us through it. The pain just happens to give God a very tangible opportunity to prove it.

"God’s love will do what you can’t fathom. God values me. My life has worth. His love fosters security. God’s got me. I fully expect to go through more hard times in my life, but God will be there before them, after them, and most importantly through them, and He will provide what is necessary for my life. I must evaluate my life and my responses to what happens in life. I should be concerned and afraid if He is not filling the God place in my life. I must continuously beg Him to protect me from what I am and weed out the nonessentials that desire to be idols in my life."

Joel looked to people, positions, and possessions to empower love, significance, and security in his life. His gods enabled him to feel complete and contented for a time. But it is the compulsion of any of us to become reliant on whomever we reverence. And when what we reverence becomes the defining entity in our lives, our god, we live in service to what will ultimately disappoint.

Jesus said, “If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26 NLT). The God place of our souls is designed for Jesus. Boundaries should be built around this sacred place to assure that none other but Christ resides there. It should be guarded by our fear of God with our appropriate view of God serving as the sentinel. The highest of all that is lofty should be ascribed to Jesus so that He attracts in full our hearts, minds, and souls, capturing our strength with the truth of His glory and virtue. Then Jesus becomes central because He is preeminent. We come to see Him in truth, as He actually is—Lord, Savior, lover of our souls, champion of our hearts.

Christ Is Relevant to Finances

In Desperate Dependency: Finding Christ Relevant to Every Area of Life, chapter 1, we presented this scenario:

The ladder of success possessed a mesmerizing appeal for Howard. His definition of success was having enough money. Enough to buy the cars he wanted. Enough to live in a house in a prestigious neighborhood. Enough to enable his children to attend the most elite schools. Enough to purchase the clothes that identified his family as upper class. Enough to be able to do what he wanted when he wanted. Enough to make people stand in awe and be jealous of what he attained. Enough.

Howard followed one promising proposal after another. His computer continuously relayed more enticing opportunities. He was proficient in every investment strategy. Pages were added to his portfolio daily. But even with all he attained, it was never enough. Anxiety plagued him. Discouragement hounded him. Lust continuously tempted him.

In the Insight Journal we suggested that you consider how each person in the examples of chapter 1 used

people to search for satisfaction,
positions to seek fulfillment, and
possessions to produce significance.

In our assessment of Howard we can note that he was looking to his possessions to produce significance. The lust for more empowered his life with the opinions of people stimulating his significance.

The culminations of the counterfeit Fruit of the Spirit adequately describe Howard: emptiness, futility, turmoil, frustration, anger, inadequacy, anxiety, alienation, and discouragement. Through his own power he sought to fill the voids in his heart.

Galatians 5:16-25 (NLT) offers the solution.

So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses.

When you follow the desires of your sinful nature, the results are very clear: sexual immorality, impurity, lustful pleasures, idolatry, sorcery, hostility, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissension, division, envy, drunkenness, wild parties, and other sins like these. Let me tell you again, as I have before, that anyone living that sort of life will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have nailed the passions and desires of their sinful nature to his cross and crucified them there. Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives.

Apart from a relevant relationship with Jesus Christ, the best we can attain are the culminations of the counterfeit Fruit of the Spirit. Only by being empowered by the Holy Spirit can we enjoy authentic Fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
The complete Fruit Chart with evidences of fruit, counterfeits, culminations, and action verses is available for download on our website http://www.desperatedependency.com under the “Evaluation” tab.

What empowers your life?

Christ Is Relevant to Freedom

Thousands of stories have been told about the deprivation and horror of the Second World War, there is one aspect that has received comparatively little attention: the story of those who lost the same war twice, the people of Germany. Not the military, the Nazis, or the government itself, but the villagers, the grandparents, the wives, and the children—the people who had little more control over their future than did the victims of the concentration camps.

In the book, Refuge, Liane Guddat Brown [Melanie’s mother], recounts sixteen months of her life as a young German girl under Russian occupation in an area that is now part of Poland. Those in her little family were the last representatives of a town of twenty thousand residents. All others had been murdered, forced to flee, or starved to death. Despite brutal treatment and harsh conditions, the Guddats survived, escaped, and reunited their family, bringing with them to the free world a compelling story of God’s marvelous grace.

There have been few reports about the suffering Germans had to endure after the war. The peace treaty, while giving hope to the West Germans, did not alleviate suffering for millions of East German refugees, forced from their homes by the Soviets. Starving and exhausted, few survived the treks during the harsh winter. But in her book, From Fear to Freedom, Liane Guddat Brown [Melanie’s mother], completes a bridge between the Berlin refugee camp, and the new home in the United States of American.

Emmy Guddat [Melanie’s grandmother] and her four children managed to arrive in the West despite near starvation and bodies riddled with boils only to move from one refugee camp to another. With God’s help she had survived sixteen months of the communistic ravages of their Russian enemies. . With His help she would also survive the abusive West Germans who considered refugees scum and dirt. God preserved the entire family, including the father whose whereabouts were not known for over three years.

Truly, the Lord does care for His own. The Guddats’ story, while containing hardships and trials of which most people will never know anything, clearly shows the Lord’s protecting hand on their family. While all around them other families were being killed or split up, dying of disease or starvation, and suffering untold horrors, the Guddats emerged into freedom, intact as a family unit and relatively healthy.

Above are excerpts from Melanie’s mother’s books. Throughout my [Melanie] life I grew up hearing the stories of how a relationship with God impacted my heritage. Because of these stories I know it has been easier for me to trust His care and guidance in my life. Christ is relevant to freedom, not just from the standpoint of living in a free country like America, but also being free from the bondage of all that seeks to enslave us.

So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding. (Eph. 1:6–8 NLT)

As our Savior He purposed to free us from the bondage of sin that keeps us stuck in the mire. His gracious action was prompted by His eternal desire to be in an intimate relationship with His creation. The resulting freedom and union enables His child to live devoted to God and totally committed to doing good deeds.

For the grace of God has been revealed, bringing salvation to all people. And we are instructed to turn from godless living and sinful pleasures. We should live in this evil world with wisdom, righteousness, and devotion to God, while we look forward with hope to that wonderful day when the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, will be revealed. He gave his life to free us from every kind of sin, to cleanse us, and to make us his very own people, totally committed to doing good deeds. (Titus 2:11–14 NLT)